The United States said Thursday that it would raise human rights concerns with China during high-level talks next week despite Beijing's warnings against foreign comments on its wave of detentions.
The United States and China on Monday open the annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue, the main forum between the world's two largest economies to discuss a range of issues.
"It is our intention to raise issues of concern directly, honestly and openly with our Chinese interlocutors, including issues of concern associated with human rights," Kurt Campbell, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia, told reporters.
Campbell said that President Barack Obama's administration believed in raising human rights "not just generally, but specifically" by seeking answers on individual cases with China.
"We ask our Chinese interlocutors for explanations about disappearances, about arrests, and legal procedures that we feel are either lacking or inappropriate," he said.
The United States last month held an annual human rights dialogue with China in which Michael Posner, the assistant secretary of state who handles human rights, accused China of "serious backsliding."
He raised cases including that of Ai Weiwei, a world-acclaimed avant-garde artist whose criticism was begrudgingly tolerated in the past but who was detained as China mounts its biggest clampdown on dissent in years.
But Posner made no tangible progress on the cases and some rights activists worried that the dialogue could be counterproductive by allowing China to confine discussions on such issues to a side dialogue.
China on Thursday warned other countries to stop commenting on the detention of Ai as Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann began a visit during which he was expected to raise Ai's case.
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard also pressed China on the detention of human rights activists during a visit to Beijing last week, but Premier Wen Jiabao denied to her that China had taken a "backward step."
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